So when you read the following, I hope it makes you think, rather than just immediately take it as the Word of God.

So what does the game say that a Potential is?

A  Potential  is  a  special  character  trait  that  can  be  added  to  tests...

Your character has three Skill Potentials. These give a +3 bonus when performing certain actions that relate to the theme of the Potential as described by the player when creating it. Each one explains how your character handles certain specific situations, and what his or her learning and talents are that make him or her a competent adventurer.

Each character also has one Defining Potential. This is the character’s most important trait, and is more a personal style than a narrow skill. As such, your Defining Potential can be applied to more situations than Skill Potentials.

Finally, every character has one Quirk. A Quirk is a Potential that gives your character a special ability, instead of giving you a skill bonus. The ability should not be some kind of attack or offensive power, it cannot create concrete items, heal wounds, or mimic a Favor too closely; it should provide some kind of utility that you can couple with other potentials for useful results.

There are three kinds. We won’t go into Quirks this time around because they’re even more of a weird element in the game, but a lot of this fits for them as well. In general, a Potential should be an important piece of your character. It’s not just a game rule, but it’s a way that you define an abstract object from your character’s whole being, as something you want to use and bring to the fore. In a sense, they are like Skills in other games, but also like feats and powers and any of those rules elements. They’re bits of your character, and they should tally up into something. Each Potential should have a name, a description, and a bonus to something, and together they should exhibit a certain theme or flavor.

How are you supposed to construct them?

Potentials should be thematically focused, with a title, description and an explanation of what tests it can apply to that makes sense when put together and makes it easy for you to invoke them in the game. Generally in Expedition, character abilities can be divided into being physical, mental, or social in in broad nature, and they deal with exploring locations (jumping, climbing, swimming, etc), examining details (empathy, body language, perception with the five senses), interacting with characters (deceit, diplomacy, charm, performances), and acquiring or interpreting information (types of lore such as history, culture, science and so on). Potentials should interact with a few of these paradigms, but there shouldn’t be any one Potential that lets you “do everything.”

I realize that’s not very detailed. However, I didn’t want to spend undue page space trying to constrict a concept that’s by design more of an art than a science. I added the Simple Potentials alternate rule to be the closed skill list for groups that don’t want to or can’t handle the process of creating their own Potentials. For the default rule on Potentials, it varies greatly based on what the GM is like and what the player actually does with the Potential. You should be building a character, and that should guide you as to what your Potentials are. What do you want to do in the game? You could look at the sample Potentials, and the table of Simple Potentials for inspiration. Here’s that table from the bottom:

A Potential should have something to do with one of those areas, because those are skills that may be important to participating in the Events of a game of Expedition, or in general useful to the lives of people in a fantasy setting. From there, you can look at the Potentials included in the section for more details.

For example, let’s take one of the Defining Potentials from that section:

Master Alchemist
Zuri graduated with “competence in all subjects esoteric and arcane.”
Provides a bonus to tests involving magic, education and scholarly knowledge.

That looks pretty expansive – magic is a vague subject, and could apply in many situations. Magic isn’t even on the table of Simple Potentials. Furthermore you also have vague knowledge wrapped up in there. But this is a Defining Potential so it SHOULD BE more expansive than this Skill Potential I just made up right now:

Miserly Means
Zuri will do whatever it takes to get the better part of a deal.
Contributes a bonus to tests made to haggle up or down the prices of goods.

In general, I assume that people would play Expedition not to always get the one-up on each other (given there’s no levels, no XP, no stat boosts, nothing to really “win” in the same sense as D&D and other such games), but to come together and play out a story and make things interesting. I assume that players would play their characters in a more collected manner and be good sports with the GM and the other players. Yeah, Zuri can just go “it’s magic, I don’t have to explain anything” in every situation, and that can be annoying to the GM or other players. Hopefully, she wouldn’t. I don’t want to emphasize the potential antagonism in the game’s rules, as I don’t think that really works or curbs any abuse, so I didn’t create a mechanism explicitly to stop this.

Potentials are essentially a skill system, that resolve any particular action you want your character to take in the narrative. The difficulty and outcome will depend on how you decide to play and what the GM decides to do in response to your play. You could assume you can solve everything with magic, but as part of the Potential system the GM sets Challenge Ratings against your rolls based on what you describe, and how difficult it would be to pull off.

For example if a bridge is about to fall and take her allies with it, Zuri could take the Support role and cast a spell to slow down the fall and help her allies climb up, rather than saying the bridge immediately rises up and she saves everybody with her magic. How you use your Potentials in any given situation could change, because they’re pretty broad traits, and how you describe them in the story will set the difficulty. If I were the GM in this scenario, I would give Zuri a lower CR (probably something like 13) for her action, because it was interesting and it doesn’t seem particularly taxing. If she’d tried to levitate the entire bridge back up in one action (outright ending the Event) I’d have probably given her a much more difficult CR to contend with, because magic or not, that is a difficult trick to perform. She would’ve still gotten the chance to do it, I probably would not outright say no. It just would’ve been more difficult than something less grandiose. It isn’t just about how you wrote up your Potentials, but actually playing them.

Ultimately I don’t make games to stop people from getting their way at all costs. The Simple Potentials system is there so that if people want a more closed-ended skill system, they can play with it. When making your own potentials, or if you as a GM are judging other players’ potentials and their use, don’t think about them as inherently abusive unless they really, explicitly do seem like an obvious “do everything” button. Instead, just wait until you see everything in play. As a player, always try to make things interesting and include possibilities for other characters to play off you, rather than trying to play it alone. As a GM, set the challenges based on what is said and what seems fair to everyone.

For fun, I’ll leave off with a sheet for Zuri. She first appeared in this article. I sort of treat her as an “iconic” World of Adel character now, and I’d like to write a story or use her in a module someday.

ZURI MAKAVANA, POTION SHOP OWNER {Adventurer} [Fortune: 0]

Archetype: MAGE

[E] 20/40/50 / [W] 10 Mnr or 5 Aggr / [Ev] 15 / [Ar] 3 / [Cnd] 12 / [Cnv] 14

[Att (Catalyst)] 3d10+2 (Armed) / [Dmg] 2d10 (Heat, Cold or Shock) / [AP] 6

Master Alchemist (Defining)
Zuri graduated with “competence in all subjects esoteric and arcane.”
Provides a bonus to tests involving magic, education and scholarly knowledge.

Customer Service (Skill)
Zuri can put on quite a friendly face if she thinks it will lead to a sale.
Grants a bonus to tests made to engage in polite or neutral discourse.

Miserly Means (Skill)
Zuri will do whatever it takes to get the better part of a deal.
Confers a bonus to tests made to haggle up or down the prices of goods.

Iomadi Agility (Skill)
Zuri’s fox-like ears and tail attest to her cunning and fleet-footedness.
Contributes a bonus to tests made to leap or climb past or around obstacles.

Iomadi Senses (Quirk)
Zuri’s Iomadi heritage gives her a leg-up in some situations.
Zuri can discern the source of any nearby sound if she focuses on it, and can see in low light conditions.

Unseen Servant (Quirk)
Zuri’s control of magic force has more uses than offense.
Zuri can telepathically manipulate small objects that a) she can see or knows the location of, b) are palmable and c) are within at most 5 feet from her. She often uses this to help make potions.

PERKS: Agility, Elementalist.

EQUIPMENT: Padded armor, Light Catalyst, Soulburn potion, Waterskin, Dry Rations, 20 Wealth.

You don’t have things like definitive spells, so if a module requires a spell to be cast for something then that might seem like trouble brewing, but you can turn those into Favors or just have players engage in Events using their Potentials to solve those problems. I think you’ll find the game can be very flexible about these things.

Expedition’s been downloaded 167 times now. A friend of mine is planning a campaign for his players, and Shaun Welch has created a character on his Gnoll’s Den blog. I’m pretty excited about it all! My time for running my own games is limited so right now I’m just planning to play with some friends, but hopefully I can inspire you to try out the game in your own way.

Now for that bonus bit.

Expedition RPG has two types of damage: actual damage that accumulates toward your incapacitation or death, and Stress that accumulates toward penalties and ultimately incapacitation at 100 (an unusual but possible circumstance). In the beta document, there were some things that were cut out in order to simplify this mechanism as much as possible. I found it better to create a simple and clean baseline, which could be modified from there. You’ll notice that monsters don’t actually behave the same way with Stress as players do. Many monsters have lower health than the players, so they don’t have thresholds. Thresholds would also give the GM a lot to keep track of for each monster in the middle of a fight, and for not much of a gain – monsters don’t have the persistence that players and player-like NPCs do within the narrative of the game, so tracking their wounds after each battle is a bit of an unnecessary pain. Instead the game presents the mechanism whereby PCs decide the fate of monsters when they win battles, up to and including death regardless of the wounds incurred in the battle.

However, if you want to have have Stress dealt to tough monsters factor in a little more, you can use the rule for Stagger. It’s a pretty simple rule. Keeping track of the Stress a monster takes, if you deal half of its Endurance to it as Stress, it becomes Vulnerable for 1 round, and cannot be Rallied out of this condition. If the creature was already vulnerable, extend the vulnerability by 1d5 rounds. So by glancing it a bunch of times you can get a free Vulnerability, and coordinating all of these moves can score you significant tactical advantage without spending AP. This gives Stress dealt by the PCs a bit more punch than it would normally have, and it does add another little thing to keep track of in battle, but it’s not as nuanced as the Stress thresholds of the PCs. You may even allow non-Saboteur PCs to deal Stress (instead of Damage) with all of their normal attacks as a choice, rather than just dealing Stress as part the Glance mechanism.  You could also use it to simulate knock-outs outside of battle, like if a PC sneaks up on an NPC and chokes him or her out, you can have the PC roll an attack and if it causes Stagger then it succeeds in knocking the NPC out.

As usual, Leader monsters cannot be incapacitated this way, nor do the conditions last as long for them.

Consider it, tinker with it and enjoy the game.

Vikerur History

Like the Adelians, the Vikerur have a rather violent history. As the Aptoa culture on Adel began to conquer the entire continent, a mostly unknown cultural group from the northlands spread throughout the Western Sea. They had lived much of their lives in brutal winters, and on mountainous terrain with poor agriculture. To survive, their culture expanded through the sea, the Embracing Waters that would take them to the promised lands. These ancient people came to blows with other ancient cultures all throughout the Western Sea, numerous Tribes establishing themselves throughout the lands soon to be called Oerst, Ghedania and Cressia. Eventually the warfare petered out and these groups assimilated or cooperated with each other. The resulting cultural group would come to be known as the Vikerur, the broad mix of peoples from all over the Western Sea who both violently and peacefully exchanged culture and came to settle the lands of the Western Sea. Vikerur is a duality – it comes from their own word for “travel” and it comes from an Adelian word for “West” (as in Western Sea). To the Adelians, they are the travelers from the Western Sea. To their own people, they are the most ancient of travelers.

Vikerur Culture

The Vikerur are a curious culture by necessity, exploring and spreading faster through the Western sea than the Adelians through the continent. The oldest Vikerur nation is Oerst, in the Northwestern portion of Adel. Cressia and Ghedania host these people as well. The ancient Vikerur existed far and wide in the western sea, and though they have established many tribes, nations and cultures, they all stem from that familiar root. As such they are known as the Vikerur diaspora, much like the continental people who spread throughout the supercontinent of Adel are a diasporic group.

Vikerur, like Adelians, live in farming villages. While most Adelian villagers live in tents raised within the wilderness (though this varies between cultures), the Vikerur peoples preferred to live out in the open, and did so in huts, made of stone or logs or clay with thatched roofs. Vikerur villages have tighter bonds than Adelian villages do. While Adelian villages may send messages to one another, trade with each other, or ask each other for aid, Vikerur villages have ancient, and recognized pseudo-familial compacts. They are organized into groups of villages that help one another, rather than being single villages that may sometimes cooperate. Vikerur had democracy before Andaliel ever rose – each person in their tribes has a unique voice to lend to anything from criminal trials to war councils. Oerst is the only truly successful overarching Vikerur kingdom – in Ghedania and Cressia, the people don’t swear their fealty easily to any regional power. This is unlike the Adelians whose villages, while each an independent microcosm of local power, respect their allegiance to one of the Five Nations.

Culturally the Vikerur are similar to the Adelians. Vikerur are polytheistic, but they revere natural powers primarily – while the Adelians might often pray to concepts, such as community, or love, the Vikerur almost always revere creatures and folkloric or ancestral heroes and characters instead. The pray to the same Greater Spirits as the Adelians do, but know them by different names. While Adelians might pray that Koyki, greater spirit of warfare and slaughter, keep its eyes away from their village, the Vikerur pray for the cunning to avoid the Bloody Shark, a deity that in essence is Koyki. The greater spirit of cooperation and love, Arclinne, is known to the Vikerur as the Embracing Waters, which connect all Vikerur by giving them routes through river and sea by which they can sail to meet their many sibling cultures. Vikerur believe in actions and deeds above all, and are more likely to wish for the power to do something, than for it to be done for them.

Silent prayers are unimportant to Vikerur religion. Adelians believe they worship the spirits through rituals embedded in their daily living, consistent prayers and contemplation in addition to festivals, shrines and overt reverences. The Vikerur instead emphasize elaborate rituals and festivals, often punctuated with the sacrifice of goods to a massive bonfire. They build few shrines, and they rarely pray. To them, it takes a bonfire, a song and a sacrifice to revere the Spirits. The Vikerur grew in harsh lands where they were beset by natural powers, and to them, the flames are deliverance given to them by the Spirits themselves. Anything cast to flame will find its way to the Spirits that protect the Vikerur. Vikerur craft ritual items and amulets that are burnt to send messages to the Spirits. Any ritual item must be marked with its maker’s blood as a sacrifice to be legitimate – so Vikerur often have scars from where blood was drawn to consecrate a sacrificial artifact.

The Vikerur don’t divide labors or restrict freedoms or sexuality. Like the Adelians, they don’t conceive of dividing people by things set at birth. They who place more emphasis on deeds and words. When each Vikerur comes of age, they can choose a sort of religious path, based on a known figure of folklore, drawn from the legends of their villages. This chosen path is what gives them direction and responsibility as adults and sets a “role.” Man or woman is irrelevant as long as you uphold the deeds you have promised to – a woman could choose to follow in the footsteps of certain great warriors, or cunning trackers, or watchful mothers known and revered in their culture, and a man could choose the same, bowing to care for children, or to care for the ill, or become a great merchant, and following in the example of a fitting folkloric figure.

Vikerur wear more animal fur and leather clothing than Adelians, who prefer bark, cotton and silk robes. They also eat more meat and fish than most Adelians do, though agriculture is equally important to them. As they moved from harsher climates, the Vikerur discovered lands where vegetation flourished, and learned of its secrets. But Vikerur villages still maintain a diet heavier on animal proteins than the diet typical to continental Adelians.

The Vikerur are primarily a group of Iomadi and Damakran. Cuporo are very rare among the Vikerur, and only found after immigration from continental Cuporo to the Western seas. Similarly, Dromedae are not indigenous people to the Western Sea, existing primarily in the super-continent. Like any Iomadi and Damakran the Vikerur have a wide variety of skin colors, hair types and body types, but they tend to be bigger than their continental cousins, enough that a difference is seen, and they tend to grow more body and facial hair than continental Adelians, who tend to have very smooth faces and bodies. Whether this is a result of diet or climate is unknown. Among the Vikerur, shark and whale Damakran are more common, and mammal-eared and tailed Iomadi, especially those of predatory creatures, are also more common.

Vikerur Territories

Oerst: The Dragon Kingdom of Oerst is the largest and most organized Vikerur land in the Western Sea. Oerst is unique in that the Vikerur upon it coexist peacefully with Dragons, which exist in much greater number on Oerst than they do in Adel. Oerst as a whole is controlled by a monarchy ruled by a marriage pair of the Dragon’s political leader and the Vikerur’s leader of the moment. This monarchical lineage gives Oerst quite a bit of power and advantage – few nations can boast of summoning an army of dragons. However, even the large population of Dragons in Oerst is few compared to the numbers of people, and the Vikerur on Oerst would find it demeaning for their partners to be referred to as mere tools. Theirs is a holy bond, and a source of great pride. Both Dragon and Vikerur alike uphold sacred traditions together.

Cressia: Cressia is a fragmented territory ruled by three different regional powers. In the mountains there is a monarchy, and the villages there pledge allegiance to a chieftain who has shown power and courage to them; near the sea, a great Seer who peers into the waters to see the future rules by divine mandate and is a symbol of their wisdom and knowledge; in the plains, a Council composed of popular leaders rules over the culture of elk riders and cattle drivers in the wide, open grasslands. These three factions have been in conflict quite recently, with a Cressian Civil War erupting between them for control of a terrible artifact, the use of which divided the peoples. With the help of the Vedarians, the artifact was destroyed in a manner predicted by the Seer of the Sea. Years since, tensions are still high between the three factions.

Ghedania: Ghedania is a network of Vikerur regions upon an island on the far edge of the Western Sea. While one can say that Adel on the whole is not incredibly technologically developed, as there are few cities and towns, and cars and tanks and airships concentrate from them and don’t have much effect on the majority of the population of each nation, Ghedania is even less developed than this, as it has no cities whatsoever and no real modern tech. It is entirely a land, and the only one of its kind, where only indigenous villages exist. The people there lead simple and perhaps secluded existences, but travelers (and grudgingly, their technology) are welcome so long as they respect the people there.

Various smaller, seemingly uninhabited islands in the Western Sea may currently play host to Vikerur cultures, or might have played host to them in the past. They may have since moved inland.

The Western Sea and Adel

The World of Adel focuses primarily on, well, the World of Adel, of the Adelians. The central continent is often the focus of these writings. However one can see a world similar to Adel with the Vikerur’s Western Sea. They are somewhat less developed than the Adelians, and have been less disturbed by the ancient things – ruins of the Lost World are rarer in the Western Sea than in the continent. The Adelians trade with the Vikerur, and some technological exchange has occurred, but even moreso than the Adelians, the Vikerur are traditional. While Adel is a duality of indigenous villages and somewhat modernistic cities, with a schizophrenic base of technology that varies wildly in its reach and impact on the culture, the Vikerur are even more wildly superstitious about technological things, and try their best not to need them. One could write a World of the Vikerur, if one had the time and inclination for it, but we must make do with summation.

Why would Vikerur be in the continent? For many Vikerur, there was no choice. Vikerur often exile or ostracize repeat criminals rather than feed and clothe them in a prison, and they save death only for the most abominable crimes. Exile involves being cast into sea, tied to a boat with limited provisions to meet their fate in whatever land they find – the Embracing Waters will judge him or her. Often these exiles hit the continent, and with a chain around their leg tied to a splinter of broken boat, they head out to complete their Ordeal. An exiled Vikerur has a chance to return to his or her people by completing an Ordeal, a great heroic deed performed in the outside world. Many Vikerur, who have deep familial bonds and great pride in their ancestral land, will attempt to seek this redress. Adelians’ stereotype of violent or thuggish Vikerur comes from the fact that contact is often with exiled men and women trying to return home, rather than earnest travelers.

The Western Sea and Adel have trade relations, so soldiers, traders and travelers will find their way to the continent. These people may seek new relationships between their homes and the villages and cities further inland, as Vikerur contact is often relegated by necessity to the coastal Adelian cities. All kinds of fascinating items may await them further inland, and if they can secure passages and find ways to return to their lands with the exotic goods, they may find themselves full of coin and glory. In addition, the Vikerur have many legends of mythological creatures and great heroes from the Adelian continent, and they may travel there to find and battle such creatures and return with sacrificial items drawn from them, or to pay homage at the graves of great historical figures. There are many reasons why the two cultures may meet.

On a political scale, the governments of Adel have good relations with those of the Western Sea. The major political units of the Vikerur are aware of their Adelian counterparts and perform trade and join each other’s battles where wanted. Vedaria participated in the Cressian Civil War on a small scale, establishing a refugee area and disabling a Lost World ruin about to be employed by a mad Vikerur chieftain. They have also helped quell piracy between the continent and western waters. Sargasso is a land now well-traveled by the Vikerur, and was once erroneously believed to be a mythical paradise where gods resided. Even Vikerur known Noshiki to be a wasteland of death and destruction, and they know of the Intolerable War that once shook the continent (a few Vikerur did some fighting against the Aptoan Empire, as well). Andaliel is disadvantaged in the Western Sea by its position in the Northeast of the Continent, but even they have relations with the Vikerur, particularly those of the northern clime, and Vikerur on Ordeal have wandered to Andaliel in the past.

Adelians and Vikerur consider each other distant cousins in a sense, and there hasn’t been conflict between them past the Aptoan Imperial Age. While their cultures may differ in places, they understand one another quite well for the most part. Their languages are similar (though a word or two might skip by each other’s heads) and though the Vikerur seem rougher and harsher to the Adelians, they can bond over the same topics of interest in many cases. They have the same ideas about people’s places in the world, and both value freedom, though perhaps in different ways. The Vikerur are dubious of some of the technology that can be seen in the continent, such as autowagons that hasten travel, or “flaming staves” (firearms) that can fell great foes, but they know the heart of every Adelian is similar to their own – if a bit softer. Adelians have suffered a terrible war against imperial aggression, and as such they have no conqueror’s eye of their own to the West.

In the process of making a game, a billion things could go wrong. I could’ve given the Dragon 750 health instead of 75. I could’ve written a non-sentence that rambles unendingly down five pages, thought I’d deleted it, and it’s still actually wedged there. I could’ve misplaced a gender pronoun, and I could’ve suggested that by consuming ganja, characters could restore all of their health as a non-action, leading to pot-smoking hippiezards dominating the game. This post is the traditional errata post, where mistakes are corrected, where horrors are unveiled, where insults are leveled at the author from positions of nigh-impunity. This is where the magic happens. Post all the errors. Post the things that might be errors but aren’t, they’re just that crazy. Post the things that aren’t errors that you still want to see changed in some way.

PAGE [Various], CHECK VS TEST: It’s hard to get away from terminology you’ve been using from several versions of your game! Essentially, every time the game mentions a “check” it really should be saying “test.” Expedition’s rolls are tests, not checks. I slipped in several areas which I’ve corrected, and wrote “check” instead of test.

PAGE 7, ROGUE ARCHETYPE: Clarification that the Rogue doesn’t receive an extra Potential. Add the following sentence: “The Rogue still receives only 5 potentials total: 2 Skill, 2 Defining and 1 Quirk.”

PAGE 15, INTELLECT PERK: The Intellect 2 AP effect is ambiguous. It should say:

•2 AP: You make an important observation about a certain area of the battlefield, giving it a +2 terrain benefit of your choice against a particular enemy type as a Support Action (“the pillars can withstand the dragon’s flames!” [+2 Armor vs. the Dragon, while in the adjoining hall]”). The benefit lasts for 1d5 rounds.

PAGE 44, FLANKING: Under “Flanking” a tactical benefit is outlined for passing initiative and “ganging up” on the same enemy. This ability is mildly unclear. Regardless of how many allies gang up on the same enemy, you only ever get +1 attack and +1 damage. The bonus isn’t added to the attacks made to “establish” a flank, they’re gained after, like how you the penalty for Hinder is only applied when the test to Hinder is successful. And finally, by default, this bonus works by characters at any range. However, if this final clarification seems abusive, you can have it so you need an ally at Close range to “set it up” for everyone. But remember that the enemies can use the same tactic too. Here is the new text:

Flanking: Normally, the Edge, Impair and similar maneuvers handle tactics such as Flanking in the narrative. But if a character attacks an enemy then every consecutive ally gaining initiative immediately after who also succeeds on an attack, on the same enemy, all gain +1 to attack and damage for 1 round, and grant this bonus to the ally initiating the tactic. These attacks can be made from any range. Keep in mind that the enemy can also do this to gang up on you.

PAGE 45, PINNING: A character rolls Potentials against Pinning. It should have been written that it is an opposed test, rather than the non-indicative “opposed roll.” An opposed attack roll may sometimes make more sense, however, such as if both characters have ranged weapons and are shooting it out with each other.

MEDIAFIRE: http://www.mediafire.com/view/?zldy90g8gqehabg

HOSTED: Coming soon.

Given that my friends and I dislike (and barely understand) these Medicae rules, and that we love the Space Marine video game, and the Dawn of War series, where Space Marines are more heroic and tough, we decided to house rule healing in Deathwatch to be more like these games, particularly Space Marine (the third person action game from Relic). Here’s the houserules I came up with, and which they approved of, and that we’ll be using in our game from now:

House Rules

WE HAVE PURPOSE
The Space Marines are the Imperium’s finest soldiers, and it takes more than cosmetic wounds to keep them from a battle. At the end of each fight, the Space Marines recover all of their lost Wounds, without need for a Medicae test. They do not recover Critical Damage. Critical Damage behaves differently for them, as well. Each time the Space Marines suffer Critical Damage, it accumulates and remains. So if a Battle Brother suffers 2 Critical Damage in one battle, and in another he suffers 2 more, he has taken 4 Critical Damage total in that mission. He suffers only the Critical Effects of the damage taken at the time – so each of those times, he suffered the Number 2 Critical Effect on the table, and not the Number 4. We tally the Critical Damage this way primarily to see how near to death a Battle Brother is.

Critical Damage can be mildly restored with a Second Wind, or fully restored by Extended Care as normal.

SECOND WIND
Between combats, the Space Marines can attempt to slow down and recover briefly before continuing the Mission. Each character can attempt a Second Wind. Each of them rolls a Toughness Test. Depending on how critical their mission is, the tension they’re experiencing, and the current need for haste, the Toughness test will be either Challenging (+0), Difficult (-10) or Hard (-20). If successful, they can each roll to recover 1d5 points of Critical Damage. Each Second Wind taken in a mission is harder than the previous. The effects of the Critical Damage are not ignored – lost hands do not grow back – but Death can be prevented.

New Actions

The following actions can only be taken by the Space Marines.

STUN
So that Stun can be used by more characters and more tactically, change it like so:
Subtypes: Add “Ranged”
Change Text To: “If the active character is unarmed or armed with a melee or ranged weapon, he can strike to Stun instead of attempting to land a killing blow. The attacker makes a Difficult (-10) Weapon or Ballistic Skill Test. If the attack succeeds, the character and the target roll Opposed Tests, with the active character using Strength (for melee) or Perception (for ranged) and the target using Toughness to oppose regardless of what type of weapon hit him. If the attacker succeeds, the target is Stunned for 1 round per degree of success that the attacker scored on his Opposed Test, and takes 1 point of Fatigue per 2 degrees of success.”

EXECUTION
Type: Full Action
Subtypes: Attack, Melee, Ranged
The character puts an enemy out of its heresy and misery with the fury (or mercy) of the Emperor. This attack can only be made against targets that are Stunned. It is resolved as a single attack against one Troop (but not Horde) or Elite target (but never against a Master target). There may also be other Special Characters that cannot be Executed this way. The character rolls a Difficult (-10) attack with Weapon Skill or Ballistic Skill. If successful, the target is instantly killed and the battle brother recovers either 1 Critical Damage (but not any effects – lost limbs are not suddenly regrown!) or 1d10 Wounds at his choice.

I am a person with diverse interests in people, and most fantasy stuff doesn’t meet them. Hell, I’m a bisexual Puertorican male whose parents are Puertorican devotees of Hinduism – I generally don’t exist in fantasy at all! When I take on projects I try to represent people who are often made invisible in these fantasy stories and fantasy games. In the World of Adel I’ve made all kinds of characters, and in their stories and descriptions in my articles I try to include all kinds of physical characteristics, sexuality, sexes and genders. Because I’m interested and inspired by all kinds of people, and also because I want readers of all kinds to find people with whom they can connect on some level, or to believe that in my world they could exist as characters without barriers. I’ve consumed nothing but “ordinary” works for so long that I wish for more diversity.

I think that the inclusion of more people, ethnicity, sexuality and so on is a very reasonable and achievable goal, especially in fantasy, where there’s such a variety of ways to make that not only justified but interesting and inexorable in the history and culture of the fictional milieu. I feel very excited and happy with what I’ve done with Adel on that order, and I wish more people would try their hand at such projects as well. Thankfully though, I’m far from alone in these endeavors. As usual with Kickstarter, there’s various tiers of involvement. The more funding it gets, the more ambitious the project can become. I’d like to see some alchemists, myself! So head on over to the kickstarter site, look up some of the contributing artists and see what you think.

Maybe at some point someone will draw a couple of fox-eared villagers!

Take the role of a Guardsman with one of twelve distinct Specialties, offering unique skills to your squad to complement those of your comrades. Will you bring the light of the God-Emperor to the battlefield as a Ministorum Priest, or will you wield the Imperium’s most cutting-edge technology as a fearsome Storm Trooper? Perhaps you’ll tend to the machine spirits of the Guard’s many war machines as a Tech-Priest Enginseer, or lead the charge as your squad’s Sergeant. Whatever your function, you’ll be a vital part of the Imperium’s vast war machine.

Fantasy Flight Games has done a great job making each of the game lines play in a unique way, from the exploration and profiteering of Rogue Trader, to the missions of Deathwatch and the glory-seeking brutality of Black Crusade. Dark Heresy was neat too, but being their very first offering it really pales in comparison to the newer ones, and yet, it still suggests a far different playstyle than the others and supports it really well. They are masters at creating new corners of the Warhammer 40k universe, fleshing them out really well, and setting you lose in them with familiar character archetypes, weapons and equipment, and familiar foes from the tabletop wargame and video games. This game has tons of potential for merging the urgency and danger of Dark Heresy with the heavy combat and tactical battles of Deathwatch and building something great. I look forward to Only War, and you can bet when it’s out I’ll give you my full impressions over at Critical Hits.

Only War is due out in the third quarter of 2012, and it’s the one RPG I’m excited for this year! Head on over to the dedicated page they’ve got for Only War and keep an eye out for product previews.

The little village of Mahal on the edge of the Nrwenya wood has seen an untimely and tragic event, and are still reeling from the occurrence, and trying to decide how they will proceed with what must be done.

The Mahal Basti (Village)

Mahal is a very ancient place (as most villages are) that has always been on the edge of Nrwenya, a forest named after the great Earth Dragon that is said to have lived its last days upon the land, over a thousand years ago, and as it decomposed, it became the forest, and with its body housed all the beings there. The forest is broad and varies in the thickness or sparseness of its brush. At the edge of the wood, low, gentle, rolling hills of green and yellow spread out until the next patch of forest many miles away, and through this, cuts a river. Mahal has access to water, good farmland, animals and wood, all that a village needs to survive. Any more than that can be acquired by trading, with traveling merchants or the distant village of Nayak. Mahal is a place of natural plenty, and its inhabitants feel quite blessed with how the Spirits provide for them.

Mahal has a population of around 500 as of the last Andalian census (this number can be disputed, as census-taking in Andaliel is often very lax in its acquisition of facts), spread out over 10 “Circles” along the edge of the wood and within the wood. Circles are groups of 10-15 dwellings (in this case they are big tents, held up with sturdy bamboo poles) around a firepit, where families live who work or support a certain role in the village. Each of Mahal’s circles has 40-60 people in them, some in families, some as individuals, some as couples. Some people come and go between the circles, swapping roles where wanted or needed. The village is a broad community within nature, with each circle living somewhat spread out from the others, but almost everyone knows and interacts with each other, and there is in general a strong sense of community.

Artisan’s Circle: Many villages have a general “Artisan’s” circle, but the artisanry of Mahal is limited. They don’t have access to steel or good stone for working and thus don’t have such a tradition, and they trade for those items with other villages or with merchants. The major artisan tradition in Mahal are the Weavers, who make ornate textiles, using felt, flax, leather, bamboo and fleece, weaving robes, shoes, and even the tents every villager calls home.

Caretaker’s Circle: The Caretaker’s Circle is for men and women whose task it is to help raise and educate children along with the Guardian Spirit. People from the Caretaker’s Circle care not only for their own children but those of others. It is also where the medicine-workers are housed and their work-tents pitched, seeing the sick and hurt and giving them a peaceful place to rest away from the day’s work. Usually this circle is away from the “heart” of the village.

Farmer’s Circle: The Farmer’s Circle lays near the fields in every village. Though some people are dedicated farmers, the purpose of the Farmer’s Circle is primarily to house whoever is working closely in the fields that week (or month, or season, however the work was divided). Everybody in the village has a duty to look after the fields, so the Farmer’s Circle is often a place where people from many Circles will get to know each other more closely as they work together. Even children work the fields, as they help gather crop, and eat insects that get on the crops for lunch.

Forager’s Circle: The Forager’s Circle is always pitched near as possible to the thick of the wood, where berries, nuts and roots can be found in abundance. The Forager’s Circle is responsible for not only gathering fruits and vegetables growing in the wild, but also insuring that the nearby forest continues to provide. They help grow mushrooms and spread berry bushes. Over many generations, a forager’s circle can turn a piece of lonely wood into a paradise.

Guardian’s Circle: The Guardian Circle are the Guards and Arbiters of the village. They correspond with the military, judicial and political authorities of the region (in Mahal’s case, in the city of Impel). They protect the village and take care of disputes, and if necessary, provide a place to house unruly people until they learn their lesson, often depositing them in a deep pit dug into the ground. Villages are relatively peaceful, so it’s often juvenile scuffles, drunkenness, or the elimination of dangerous predators that falls to the Guardians.  In times of relative peace and quiet, most the Guardians will also help the History circle in preparing festivals and food, thus taking care of the village in another way. The guardians are armed with old pistols and rifles from the Intolerable War period, as well as tough, thick wooden clubs.

Herder’s Circle: The Herder’s Circle is located near the fields, and houses the village animals and those who care for them and raise them. The animals are kept in a fenced-around area and let out for food and exercise every so often. Herders keep junglefowl and pheasants, tend to the sacred goats and aurochs, tame falcons and foxes (and sometimes Drakes, though rarely), and sometimes breed riding deer (Wapiti) which they may trade, sell, or ride. The Herder’s Circle know a lot about the local fauna, and advise others on the behaviors, mating and language of beasts.

History Circle: The History Circle not only keeps relics, records and stories of the village, as well as doing some of the cooking and arranging festivals and performances, training other villagers in the religious performances of Adelian polytheism. They also insure the procurement and safekeeping of the heirloom seeds used by the village, which have been cultivated and handed down over a thousand years. The History Circle are also the attendants of the village’s Guardian Spirit, keeping it company, rendering obeisances for the village as a whole, and storing the gifts given to it. The Guardian Spirit always gives the things it has made or collected to Andalian tax collectors when tax time comes.

Hunter’s Circle: It is the job of the hunter’s circle to procure meat, fish, hide, claws and other necessities from the wilderness. Like the Guardians, they are often armed with older model guns for taking down large prey, but they also use bows, or even engage in melee, to conserve precious ammunition. The Hunter’s Circle, like the Forager’s Circle, must also keep an eye on nature, and never take more than is necessary. If an animal species seems to be in trouble, the Hunters investigate the cause and insure that it is not molested by villagers or outsiders until it bounces back.

Logger’s Circle: The Loggers are tasked with gathering wood, as well as fighting fires (if necessary, and if a fire is small enough that the whole village needn’t be involved) and replacing any lost forest responsibly. They also make wooden crafts, such as gathering and preparing the bamboo poles that hold up the tents in the Mahal basti. When wood is not needed, many Loggers weave or gather water or perform other tasks that are more pressing.

Trader’s Circle: The Traders are tasked with keeping trade goods, arranging and performing meetings with other villages and with merchants, keeping inventory and tracking what’s needed for the village, as well as housing visitors to the village. The Trader’s Circle also keeps some of the tax that Andalian tax collectors require every year, in tradeable goods like skins, tools, medicine and other crafts that can be given to satisfy the collectors. Most of the tax is paid for in food, wood, or seed that is taken to Impel. Mahal has always paid its tax to the Republic dutifully and on time.

Current Events of the Mahal Basti

Mahal has been recently quite shaken. Recently, a group of their hunters was slain deep in the wood while looking for signs of an upcoming migration. There were no survivors, and the bodies, according to Herders, suggest the presence of a creature legendary to the Mahal, known as the Crested Imperial Drake. This large, bipedal creature has a colorful crest around its head that is strong enough to absorb arrows and deflect bullets, and is very large and powerful. Its arms are near to worthless, but it chases down and bites its prey, tearing large pieces right off them. This brutal display is evident in the bodies. Large and swift bites rendered the victims instantly dead with terrible and massive wounds. It was a horrific scene.

There have been five recorded Imperial Drake sightings in Mahal’s history. According to the History Circle sages, each time, a hero from the village was sent, and the one who slew the beast became a Sooma or a village heroic legend. This has become a tradition and folklore among the people of Mahal. But they have doubts as to whether they can or should hunt down the Drake for retribution. Would it be worth the loss of more hunters or guardians? Would the tradition cloud the judgment of their protectors, and impede their ultimate mission? Who would they even send, and how would they decide who is worthy? There are deeply concerning social, religious and traditional issues they must discuss.

It is near to harvest time, as well to other yearly events of importance in the Mahal Basti. Whatever will be done, will have to be done soon, in time for them to tend to other needs of the community.

Characters of the Mahal Basti

Xia Xia: Xia Xia is the Guardian Spirit of the Mahal. He is a spirit of the winds, with very pale blue skin, strikingly bright blue eyes, and dark contrasting hair tied into a blue. His face is powdered white and red circles are painted around his eyes, as well as red lipstick applied, and his hair is tied into an ornate bun with a fan-shape ornament near his crown. Dressed in long, greatly ornate bright red and gold robes, Xia Xia is quiet and gentle, often remaining in his shrine. He teaches his classes from there every morning and night for the village children (and any visitors who want to learn).

Xia Xia would advocate that the villagers seek help and establish a Great Hunt, perhaps with the Nayak, to seek out and kill the Imperial Drake. Though it pains him to destroy a majestic beast like that, it is necessary for their safety, and the murder simply cannot be overlooked, even if it can be forgiven. But Xia Xia doesn’t want to interfere with the mortal customs of the village by ordering such a thing. They must decide by themselves what to do and how to do it. If he were to give input, it would surely be taken as a sort of religious edict, which Xia Xia doesn’t want.

As the History Circle, Guardian Circle and Hunter Circle decide what to do, Xia Xia has made it his job to reassure other villagers, and takes daily walks now throughout the village to talk to people. He is also trying to relay the input of other people to the little council forming between the Hunters, Guardians and his own Attendants, since their little clique is very offputting to the other villagers, who would like a say in the current events.

 Upendra Dejande: Upendra the current chief herder of the Herder’s Circle. He is so large and broad of a Iomadi that it is joke sometimes he must have had a Sorian ancestor. He is a big, tough man with short, stiff wolf ears and a gray tail as his Iomadi markings. Due to the often dirty nature of his work, he wears leather pants and a long jacket, rather than a soft cloth robe like most villagers. He likes to keep his hair long and in a ponytail, despite how dirty it gets. He is in charge of raising and protecting the aurochs, the village’s most sacred animal. Their milk is very important to the village, used to make cheese as well as ghee, butter that is served in offerings. He also helps to train animals.

After the Drake attack, he was quite taken aback for some time. He lost a former friend and childhood crush, for whom he still had some lingering emotion. He greatly admired this man, and with the loss of his wife several years ago to disease, he felt ever more alone in the world, despite the herders who support and count on him. Eventually he came out of his depression with purpose. He has been conspiring with some of the younger and more eager hunters and guardians to go find the Drake, set some traps, and kill it. This enterprise is extremely dangerous, but he is tired of the indecision plaguing the village. To him, an animal has killed people, and respect for the beast’s nature is secondary.

Upendra had two children by his late wife, making him all the more eager to end the threat presented by the Drake. He does not want any of the other herders to be involved in his plan.

Chenoa Karkajand: Chenoa is the current chief of the Forager’s Circle. She is a small, lean and athletic woman with dark skin and reddish-brown hair cut to the shoulder. She wears a camouflaged robe to her work as a forager, along with a black mesh suit under it that she traded for with a soldier. As a Cuporo, she is shorter than Iomadi, but nobody would say she is less powerful. Her markings are berry vines which seem to trail through her hair. In some seasons, when she is feeling under the weather, thorns grow on her vines. Little buds of them are currently manifesting.

The Forager’s Circle plays a great incidental part in scouting and patrolling the village, and they know the wood better than everyone else, since they go out far in search of food and they have planted and nurtured many of the trees and bush over their history. Sadly, it seems that their input is hardly being listened to or requested, which is causing some friction within the little community. This kind of resentment is uncommon and pernicious.

She believes it is foolish to harass the Drake because it doesn’t know where their village is, and because the event happened far enough away that the Drake’s stomping grounds probably do not include any of the villages. She feels that an attack on the Drake would just broadcast their presence to it, and should it fail, lead the creature back to the vulnerable village. It has been long enough now that the Sooma of the past are basically all legends more than history. Chenoa doesn’t believe those tales of men and women single-handedly defeating monsters have anything to teach about the Imperial Drake and the strength needed to fight it. Sending another small team would be suicide, and sending a large team would leave the village poorly defended, as well as take away precious hands that will be needed during upcoming events, such as the coming harvest, the new bloomings, and the yearly migration of the Floravores from the forest into the hills and plains.

She and her wife adopted one of the children left orphaned by the Drake, whom they had a connection with as they had taken care of the child before during a season in the Caretaker’s Circle. While they don’t believe in the preservation of the Drake, they do believe it is more dangerous to fight it as they are now, than to leave it.

‘Ardcase Hampton Lee: Lee is a Sorian hunter (some would say poacher), a big, green, scaly creature with thick arms, huge shoulders, a long, tough tail and a somewhat flat head with a long snout, prickly with teeth. Lee went into the village yelling about all kinds of inscrutable nonsense one day, generally scaring everyone, and was thumped by several guardians and thrown in a pit until they managed to communicate with him. He claims he was “drank,” having a “conniption” and that, normally, “yellah-bellied” “‘delians” wouldn’t have been able to subdue him. Regardless, he was forgiven and allowed to stay in the village on the condition that he not have even the smallest drop of alcohol.

Lee was exiled from his Sorian tribe for messing up a harvest by falling drunk into a pumpkin field, crushing all the pumpkins in his stupor. For this intolerable sin he was banned for life as a “pump-smasher,” a Sorian so horribly no-good that other Sorians can smell what a worthless deadbeat he is. In reality, Lee, when sober, is very handy with a machete and a shotgun, and has made a living as a ‘Ardcase – a Sorian dialect word for a nomad hunter. He has stayed in the village for several weeks now and done a bit of hunting and helping around. But he feels that his big opportunity has come. If he manages to kill the Drake, he can make off with extremely valuable hides and crests that sell very highly to traders. Then he can spend the money on so much drink that he’ll die and go to Sorian heaven – or at least, he’ll think he has.

Sergeant Ayonde Gokhala: Sergeant Ayonde is a young Iomadi soldier with the 5th Mobile Battlegroup “Gryphon” of the Impel region, as a Giant Killer. He is relatively fair-skinned and light bodied and has his long, dark hair tied in a simple ponytail. His Iomadi markings are tiger-striped ears and tail. Though biologically female, Sergeant Ayonde is transgender and dresses, behaves (insofar as the few socially distinct behaviors of this sort in Adelian society) and is addressed in the masculine, and had a mastectomy performed by a regimental surgeon upon joining the service.

He is energetic and has a soft and friendly face, and loves to hear himself talk, so he was assigned to journey to the Mahal basti when Impel command received news of the Imperial Drake, and negotiate permission for some Giant Killers to move in and help. Unlike the Mahal, who have only seen a few such Drakes in all of their history, Army command has seen plenty of them all around Andaliel, and knows the danger they represent. Currently, Sergeant Ayonde is trying to convince the villagers to allow the deployment of a Direwolf ‘Giant Killer’ to their village, a tank with a 50 ore cannon that can engage the Drake and minimize loss of life. For several reasons, this offer has been rebuffed. Ayonde is ready to assist the villagers in the effort to kill the Drake, having brought with him a portable 5-ore gun with exploding shells that can cause some harm even to the beast’s terrible armor. But if the Drake attacks again or is hunted, he would really like the tank to appear.

Ayonde is staying with the traders, and has made a hobby of playing drums and a guiro very badly during the nightly songs and dances that the village holds to bring some levity to the current events.

…

Is that about past the character limit for the text previews on my various affiliations? I think it is.

Anyway let’s talk about some Good News, which was not part of the joke.

Expedition: The RPG Beta drops mid-April for realsies. Look forward to it. There’s been some more changes since the last few articles (how character generation works in those, after some feedback, has been radically redesigned). I’m not going to write articles about those changes. Instead I might write more about rural fox-eared pseudo-hindus and their fantastical problems. We’ll be playing that by ear. I was having a terribly hard time writing stuff for this blog so I took my hiatus, went out and did some stuff in the big wide world, and have now returned to, hopefully, business as usual. Despite the crushing obscurity of this blog, it managed to somehow pull a hundred unique hits a day despite my posting nothing. I’m rather happy with that, especially since a bunch of World of Adel articles somehow helped out in that, which is rare.

As usual, if you have things you’d like me to write about, email, tweet, comment, etc.

REJECTED APRIL’S FOOLS JOKES IDEAS

•Spirits of Eden Grognard Edition: I already made this joke once, and in about the best form it will ever take. By now I’m pretty much already known as the anti-thesis of ‘classic D&D’ anyway.

•I’m Actually Working on D&D Next: I found I have nothing to say about D&D Next that is comprehensive and bilious enough to carry a joke larger than the 140 character snipes I make at the ongoing trainwreck from several miles away with a cheapo Hi-Point scope every so often on Twitter. Jokes about ‘Contrarian In Chief’ almost wrote themselves, and that told me they wouldn’t have been very good if they had been allowed to continue doing so.

•Writing Another Joke RPG: I couldn’t come up with another idea as timely as Incongruent Future. While I floated around an idea of writing one that was care bears-ish in its innocent, polite guidance of the PCs, and anathema to the literary nemesis that every lover of RPGs has in Incongruent Future, it wasn’t very funny in the end.

In the end I have a personal distaste for the April Fool’s Joke as it’s usually not funny and just renders a bunch of websites I like using either more annoying, contentless or totally useless for a day, so I figure a non-joke best conveys both my silent disapproval, and my commitment to efficiency in the pursuit of crushing laziness.